Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

dcurt.is

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 122 posts

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#71

Post by dean »

mrb wrote: post #27
kitsune_ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market does not think. It is neither efficient nor rational. If the stock market is about the future, then how do you interpret Goldman Sachs' share price of $235 in November 2007? 1 year later it fell to $53. A company's share price will tell you nothing about the actual financial stability or future of the company.

This man is absolutely right. The stock market is rarely rational. This is exploited by value investors , like myself, who invest in companies that are undervalued for no reason.

"The stock market is rarely rational. This is exploited by value investors, like myself, who invest in companies that are undervalued for no reason."

Which tends to make the market more rational again.

But I agree that the market is not always rational, else there would never be a bubble.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#72

Post by 6ren »

It's true there's much to be learned from microsoft on commercially successful platforms. They began with BASIC interpreters - a platform - which became a standardization across machines, to the extent that manufacturers boasted they were Microsoft BASIC compatible.

Then, their insight that DOS was important. The original PC had a choice of three OS's - MSDOS was cheapest. Start at the low end, as the article says.

Perhaps one reason they failed where iPhone succeeded was that the iPhone initially wasn't a platform. There was no appstore, you couldn't actually run apps on it, only those built in. The original iPhone was an app, not a platform - and it seems likely that that's what was needed to create that market. Of course, that doesn't excuse MS from not playing catch up as fast as Google did.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#73

Post by snowwrestler »

dcurtis wrote: post #35
mrb wrote: post #30

"Microsoft's execution in mobile has been excellent". This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don't even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the "Entertainment and Devices" unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M. The only argument the au…

This isn't really an issue that you can take an extreme on. Even in relative "failure," Microsoft has executed correctly in mobile. Actually, their execution has been way better than I would have expected. It is losing money, sure, but short term losses are not important when you're talking about entering a market as large as the mobile phone market after the existing players are firmly entrenched. The traditional me…

> It is losing money, sure, but short term losses are not important when you're talking about entering a market as large as the mobile phone market after the existing players are firmly entrenched.

I think the point on mobile is that Microsoft itself was a well-entrenched player in mobile, and they laughed[1] while allowing that position to get completely eroded by less experienced competitors.

It's true that after that happened, they've seemed to build a pretty good project in Windows Phone 7. But I don't think it's really accurate to start the scorekeeping so recently.

[1]:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U

edit: formatting

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#74

Post by shepbook »

fleitz wrote: post #43
mrb wrote: post #30

"Microsoft's execution in mobile has been excellent". This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don't even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the "Entertainment and Devices" unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M. The only argument the au…

Can you give us a realistic game plan that starts with the iPhone launch & WinMo6 and ends better? After iPhone excellent execution gets you failure, that's just the current state of the market. They've made awesome deals with companies like HTC, even convincing HTC to pay them $15 for every Android phone they sell, etc. They've pretty much got Nokia on lockdown almost exclusively WinPhone7.

"They've made awesome deals with companies like HTC, even convincing HTC to pay them $15 for every Android phone they sell, etc."

Suing hardware companies like HTC is not "convincing" them of anything. It's strong arming them using "software patents" (aka. patented math) because they realized they were losing. I believe I read somewhere that microsoft makes more money from suing manufacturers over Android than they make on their own mobile platform/software. Seriously... WTF kind of business plan is that?

Can't innovate and make something amazing? Just sue the company that does!

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#75

Post by snowwrestler »

throwaway63-90 wrote: post #60

Developers, developers, developers. OK, Steve, whatever you say. It's only a matter of time before they lose their business customers. Then they are really in trouble.

It will be a while before that comes to pass. There aren't any significant competitors to Excel, Active Directory, or Exchange.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#76

Post by throwaway63-90 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #75
throwaway63-90 wrote: post #60

Developers, developers, developers. OK, Steve, whatever you say. It's only a matter of time before they lose their business customers. Then they are really in trouble.

It will be a while before that comes to pass. There aren't any significant competitors to Excel, Active Directory, or Exchange.

With Excel, I'm not sure. But if customers who are getting increasingly greater exposure to UNIX, through various channels, learn about UNIX alternatives to Active Directory and Exchange that work as well or better, but which cost less, it may well come to pass.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#77

Post by DeepDuh »

CubicleNinjas wrote: post #70

"While Microsoft is no disruptive force in tech today, the truth is that it has never been." This is so false it is painful for me to read. I'm embarrassed for the author. "The company's core competency is a process it uses for entering and consuming existing industries. After it enters a market, it rides off the innovations of its competitors, uses its existing brand power and sheer size to tackle a large surface ar…

Courier looked extremely promising and I'm saying that as an OSX,iPhone,iPad user. How they could kill that thing off still blows my mind. Then again we have only ever seen an interface mockup, haven't we? Maybe the software / device they had didn't work. Still no excuse to just let this idea go, I still think that a booklet style tablet with pen, capacitive touchscreen and these GUI ideas would be great for many usecases. What's MS's thought process here? "Yeah no, we don't think specialized solutions like these are great for us, let's instead keep smashing on Win32 until it fits unto smartphones and tablets and serve one huge shit sausage."

I wait with pleasure for the business user reactions once Windows' most useful and perfected feature, the start menu, is gone and replaced with a touch optimized fullscreen window with gigantic whitespaces and huge mouse paths for achieving anything. It is going to be beautiful.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#78

Post by DeepDuh »

throwaway63-90 wrote: post #76
snowwrestler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be a while before that comes to pass. There aren't any significant competitors to Excel, Active Directory, or Exchange.

With Excel, I'm not sure. But if customers who are getting increasingly greater exposure to UNIX, through various channels, learn about UNIX alternatives to Active Directory and Exchange that work as well or better, but which cost less, it may well come to pass.

Apple's 'Numbers' is actually quite good for most use cases, it's quite a bit more elegant as Excel anyway. The problem with Apple is their lack of experience in business support and their shortcomings in Q&A in the mac department lately. But windows 8 will definitely open up opportunities for contenders like Apple and Google in the business world.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#79

Post by throwaway63-90 »

DeepDuh wrote: post #78
throwaway63-90 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Excel, I'm not sure. But if customers who are getting increasingly greater exposure to UNIX, through various channels, learn about UNIX alternatives to Active Directory and Exchange that work as well or better, but which cost less, it may well come to pass.

Apple's 'Numbers' is actually quite good for most use cases, it's quite a bit more elegant as Excel anyway. The problem with Apple is their lack of experience in business support and their shortcomings in Q&A in the mac department lately. But windows 8 will definitely open up opportunities for contenders like Apple and Google in the business world.

Interesting.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#80

Post by CamperBob2 »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #57
dcurtis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really an issue that you can take an extreme on. Even in relative "failure," Microsoft has executed correctly in mobile. Actually, their execution has been way better than I would have expected. It is losing money, sure, but short term losses are not important when you're talking about entering a market as large as the mobile phone market after the existing players are firmly entrenched. The traditional me…

Correctly? Hardly. They've executed competently on some aspects. But if they hope to be a serious competitor they have to do better.

They've managed to avoid electrocuting any of their users. Other than that, if they've done anything "competently" in the mobile space, I haven't seen it.
Post reply on HN